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Swedish director Ruben Östlund, who won Cannes Film Festival’s Palme d’Or for “The Square” and “Triangle of Sadness,” was among the guests at the German Films and Medienboard Reception on May 18 in the garden of the Mondrian Hotel in Cannes.

Östlund, who is in the Riviera resort to promote his latest production, “The Entertainment System Is Down,” was accompanied by Philippe Bober of Coproduction Office, one of the film’s producers, and Erik Hemmendorf of Plattform Produktion, Östlund’s Swedish producer. (They are pictured above.)

German Films, which is celebrating its 70th anniversary this year, was represented at the event by managing director Simone Baumann, and Medienboard, which is a film fund for the Berlin-Brandenburg region, was represented by its CEO Kirsten Niehuus. Variety was the media partner for the reception.

Among the other guests attending were Karim Aïnouz, director of “Motel Destino,” which plays in this year’s Competition section at Cannes.

On the edge of what is bound to be the domestic box office’s third $200M+ weekend thanks to Barbie and Oppenheimer, the motion picture industry’s fret is whether the great post-pandemic moviegoing rebound is about to screech to a halt due to the SAG-AFTRA strike and actors prohibited from promoting.

Barbie and Oppenheimer are expected to gross a combined $150M this weekend, with many moviegoers planning double features. All of this momentum has been built on the backs of each pic’s casts’ globe-trotting press tours.

Currently, the 2023 domestic box office through July 16 at $5 billion is surging 13% ahead of last year which ended at $7.4 billion. Is a great thing about to go very wrong?

Studios’ marketing and distribution brass remain vigilant as to whether they’ll start moving titles, assessing the calendar weekly. Continually, we’re told that the SAG-AFTRA strike is bound to impact the latter part...

Several times in recent years, Sony has used the Cannes Film Festival to promote a key upcoming title, despite the movies not officially being involved in the event — see Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation in 2018, 2017’s The Emoji Movie and 2016’s The Angry Birds Movie.

This year, the marketing team pulled out the stops for Neill Blomkamp’s Gran Turismo: The Movie, staking out prime real estate with a billboard on the Carlton Pier and then — rather than ahead of the fest as they did with the previous films — hosting a photo call with talent as the Croisette calmed down toward the end.

From left, in front of sign: ‘Gran Turismo’s Neill Blomkamp, Maximilian Mundt, Geri Halliwell, Orlando Bloom, Archie Madekwe and Asad Qizilbash

Although David Harbour did not make the photo call that featured Blomkamp, Orlando Bloom, Geri Halliwell Horner, Archie Madekwe and producer Asad Qizilbash, he was...

On Saturday, film and TV funder Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg celebrated the six films that it funded running in the official program of the Cannes Film Festival.

These were Ruben Östlund’s “Triangle of Sadness,” in Competition, Ali Abbasi’s “Holy Spider,” in Competition, Emily Atef’s “More Than Ever,” in Un Certain Regard, Mia Hansen-Løve’s “Un beau matin,” in Directors’ Fortnight, Sergei Loznitsa’s “The Natural History of Destruction,” in Special Screening, and Mantas Kvedaravicius’ “Mariupolis 2,” in Special Screening.

Commenting on the role Medienboard played in funding the films in Cannes, the organization’s chief Kirsten Niehuus said: “Medienboard Berlin-Brandenburg and other film funds play an important role in sustaining high quality cinema in Europe and in international co-productions around the world.”

Speaking about the type of films Medienboard likes to fund, she said: “Not very original but true – we prefer films that bring something original to an audience.

How to Sell Drugs Online (Fast) was one of the first shows I ever reviewed and thought it was a fairly niche and underground show but clearly it was popular enough for a second season to be green-lit by the team at Netflix! This is one of the first-ever dubbed shows I have ever seen, it was originally produced in German with an English dub being put over the top for the English audience. While it’s fantastic that we, as an English speaking audience, are able to enjoy international television and appreciate the talent/ideas of artists all over the world, I did find the dubbing a little distracting due to the mismatch of lip movements to words being said.

If you haven’t seen the first season, this series follows the lives of a misfit group of teenagers who develop a website in an attempt to make money and increase their street cred.

Netflix has commissioned a third season of How To Sell Drugs Online (Fast), which the streamer has confirmed is its most-watched German original series.

The show, which follows two teenagers who inadvertently become large scale drug dealers, is also popular in Italy, France, Brazil, the service said.

Created by Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann, the series first premiered in May 2019 and its second season debuted last week on July 21.

Käßbohrer and Murmann will return as showrunners for s3 with Arne Feldhusen returning to direct. Maximilian Mundt (Moritz), Danilo Kamperidis (Lenny), Damian Hardung (Dan), Lena Klenke (Lisa) and Lena Urzendowsky are all returning as key cast members, with Langston Uibel a new addition. S3 is set to go into production in and around Cologne.

The line-up includes new TV projects from Hirokazu Kore-eda, Gurinder Chadha and Gregg Araki.

Canneseries, the annual TV festival running alongside the Miptv content market in Cannes, has unveiled the competition line-up for its second edition (April 5-10).

The first two epsidoes from 10 new international series will screen in the main competition.

Titles include Channing Powell’s London-set psychological thriller The Feed for Amazon and Liberty Global. David Thewlis stars in the dystopian tale as the inventor of a brain implant that allows people to share thoughts and emotions alongside Guy Burnet, Michelle Fairley and Nina Toussaint-White as his family members.

Netflix movies may still be question mark in terms of being allowed in competition at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival in May, but the streaming giant will be present at Cannes Series. The Cannes television festival will mark its second year next month with Netflix going up against rival Amazon in the competition section. The full lineup includes series from Israel, Norway, Spain, and Belgium.

Netflix’s competition entry is the German series “How to Sell Drugs Online Fast,” from writers Philipp Käßbohrer and Matthias Murmann. Amazon is heading to Cannes Series with “The Feed,” a London-set drama created by Channing Powell and based on the novel Nick Clark Windo. “The Feed” stars “Game of Thrones” favorite Michelle Fairley opposite David Thewlis in a story about a piece of technology that allows people to instantly share thoughts and emotions. The tech falls into the wrong hands and becomes a murderous weapon.

Cannes Series has revealed the lineup, jury and masterclasses for its second edition, which takes place alongside the Mip TV market on the French Riviera.

Among ten series in competition at the TV festival are Netflix’s German show How To Sell Drugs Online and Amazon’s UK series The Feed with Michelle Fairley and David Thewlis. Out of competition shows include Starz’ Now Apocalypse and Russel T Davies’ Years And Years. Scroll down for the lineup in full.

The competition jury will be presided over by Dark show-runner Baran bo Odar with members comprising actor, director and author Stephen Fry (Gosford Park), actors Miriam Leone (Non Uccidere) and Emma Mackey (Sex Education), actor and director Katheryn Winnick (Vikings) and composer Rob (The Bureau). David Cross and Jude Law are among those with projects in the short form competition.

Among those set to give masterclasses will be Game Of Thrones...